emoji

noun

emo·​ji ē-ˈmō-jē 

plural emoji or emojis

: any of various small images, symbols, or icons used in text fields in electronic communication (as in text messages, email, and social media) to express the emotional attitude of the writer, convey information succinctly, communicate a message playfully without using words, etc.

The function of emoji, as [emoji developer Shigetaka] Kurita describes it—adding subtle emotional emphasis to a sentence in text—isn't too different from that of emoticons, the frowny and smiley faces that people have been making out of punctuation since the mid-1990s.

—Britt Peterson

compare emoticon

Examples of emoji in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The couple captioned the photo with a single red heart emoji. —Taijuan Moorman, USA TODAY, 15 Feb. 2025

The photo was captioned with a single red love heart emoji. —Kirsty Hatcher, People.com, 14 Feb. 2025

Kelly, one of Boston's young bullpen arms, took to social media after news of the Bregman signing broke, sampling sharing three exclamation-mark emojis. —Dan Perry, Newsweek, 13 Feb. 2025

Vonn wrote Monday on X with a shrug emoji, before deleting her post and adding another. —Andrew Dampf, The Denver Post, 11 Feb. 2025

Word History

Etymology

borrowed from Japanese, literally, "pictograph," from e "picture, drawing" + moji "letter, character"

First Known Use

1997, in the meaning defined above

Kids Definition

emoji

noun

emo·​ji

ē-ˈmō-jē

plural emoji or emojis

: any of various small images, symbols, or icons used in electronic communication (as email) to express the feelings or attitude of the writer or to present information concisely or playfully